Does being in a C7 Caribou when, on touch down, the right side landing gear colapsed count?

Picture of a C7 for reference:

quote:

Originally posted by jhe888:
Once, they ran out of Chateau Latour bordeaux and I had to settle for Chateau Margaux.

Good God, Man! I hope it wasn't the '69! That would have added insult to injury.

In a snowstorm flying in an Army Otter from Fairbanks to Anchorage I was sitting in the front row passenger compartment and watched out the front as we were approaching the mountains. The nose was pointed up, the engine seemed to be at full power (as far as I could tell), and the long altimeter needle seemed to be spinning like a top indicating we were losing altitude at a good clip. The pilot made the same run two or three times before deciding to take a longer, but lower altitude path over the mountains.

I was more fascinated by the whole thing than worried, but a few months later an Otter (perhaps the same one) with other members of my unit made what was essentially a soft, but unintentional landing on a snow field that was right below the aircraft as it came out of the clouds flying over mountainous terrain.

To this day I actually enjoy flying almost all the time despite the cramped conditions and uncomfortable seats. My first experiences were in Constellations across the Atlantic to France and back in the mid-1950s. Those flights seemed to take forever, the engines were so loud that conversations were virtually impossible, and those were the days when people got sick on commercial flights—lots of people.

Gratuitous photo taken during a flight in Vietnam and earlier than the one described above (I still have the 17mm semifisheye lens it was taken with):

I stupidly volunteered to be pulled out of the water for a public demo when I was in the Coast Guard. Cold and wet flying around in a Sikorsky HH52 when there was a loud boom, voice over my earphones says”anywhere where we can land?” (We wer at the end of a state road in the Florida swamps-Yankeetown)

Mind you, I’m looking into the rear boom and seeing hydraulic oil under pressure spraying across the interior of the aircraft....

The crewman smacked me and asked me again, I said there was a baseball field about a mile inland...

The pilot took off at max speed to keep the tail behind us and we made a “semi-crash” landing at speed....

I admit I ran like a girl when we hit the deck...the ASM just laughed at me and explained it wouldn’t blow up....but I got nominated to walk the two miles to my SAR station to get a Truck and carry everyone to the station.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: MikeinNC,

Hit turbulence bad enough to pop open a couple of overhead bins as we were decending to land at an airport in Bozeman MT. People were freaking out.

I told my Bride we were buying a used pickup to drive home to Texas in. She didn’t allow that.

Have flown quite a bit commercially, but only one instance really had my ass puckering. My B-I-L and I were going to Cozumel for a dive vacation my wife sent me on for my 40th. Buffalo to Miami and then on to Cozumel.

Typical uneventful flight until we were landing in Miami. Fairly close to the ground, and all the sudden we dropped, my stomach was in my throat and thought death as eminent. If I had to guess it was a 200' dead drop. Both me and Jason were white as sheets!

Some day I’ll write about my 29-hour Continental Air flight ordeal between Newark airport and Dover AFB. The number of clusterfucks in the story is pretty incredible & worthy of its own dedicated thread.

Flying back from Norway, short stop in Iceland.

The night before we flew out, our Norwegian counterparts treated us to a good time. Having flown with a hangover before, I tried to behave as best I could.
Apparently I didn't try quite hard enough, because I went from hungover to sinus infection to ear infection real fast. I couldn't equalize during takeoff, and when we landed in Iceland I was ready to die. Taking off from Iceland had me actually crying, and by the time we landed in Boston I was completely dead inside.
Boston customs took one look at me and she actually said "you look horrible, baby" and stamped my pass to let me through.
2 and a half hours later, I got home to my wife who rushed me to the ER. High temp, and 1 eardrum was about to rupture from the pressure.

I doubt remember what happened after that, the meds were very good to me. 2 days later I was back to work.

Cool photo sigfreund!!!!

I’ve been flying for work for almost 20 years and doing about 75k miles a year on average, and I’ve been very lucky. I’ve only had three cancellations and one was going to work so I didn’t care. The others were weather so not the airlines fault.

Some memorable flights:

Flying from SMF to ATL on a red eye. We boarded and maintenance was finishing something up. After an hour or so we learned that they had broken something else and that we were not able to retract the landing gear. The decision was made to fly to SLC wheels down and pick up a new plane there. The pilot said it was going to be slow and loud. I really didn’t think it was all that loud but it was slow. Once we got to SLC there was a whole clusterfuck. First maintenance there tried to fix it for an hour, then they gave up and pulled into a gate that wasn’t anywhere close to the new planes gate despite it being like 4am when every gate around us was empty. Then they failed to tell people to keep their boarding passes so once we started boarding the new plane they had to print new passes for half the plane. A flight that should have taken around 5 hours took 12.

Next was LGA to ATL. We got diverted to Savannah due to weather in ATL, after being in a holding pattern for hours. Once in Savannah we got a gate but got told that the airport was pretty much closed and that we could get off the plane but if we did we would not be allowed back on. I stayed on for about an hour longer but finally had enough. I got off the plane, rented a car and just drove back to ATL. The next day I went to the airport and dropped off the rental and got my bag. The messed up part is that I found out that plane sat in Savannah the whole night and had just got in a few hours before I drove down. I was really glad I made that decision.

Finally another SMF to ATL, we had a guy have a heart attack. They diverted and landed somewhere, I forget where exactly. It wasn’t too long of a delay but I think about that guy a lot and hope he’s okay.

Sitting in cattle car on a 737 when it was hit by a big bolt of lightning on approach for landing. Plane got tossed around, cabin went dark, people screamed, wife dug her nails into my arm damn near to the bone. It was not a fun flight.

quote:

Originally posted by jhe888:
Once, they ran out of Chateau Latour bordeaux and I had to settle for Chateau Margaux.

For me it was on some puddle jumper (a CRJ200 I believe) a couple of years ago where I first learned that Delta would no longer be serving Woodford Reserve on those short flights. I wept the entire 45 minutes. It was truly tragic.

In 1977 flying Piedmont Airlines out of BWI to I guess it was... hell not sure where we landed I was on the way to Parris Island, Marine Corps boot camp and we hit an air pocket and the plane started dropping what a way to start my new career.

There was the time those snakes got loose …

I had two.

First was an American Airlines MD-80 DFW-->Reno. At about FL27 we hit clear air turbulence, dropping about 6,000 feet inside of a minute. The seat belt sign was off and the cabin crew had the drinks cart in the aisle. As we descended, everything not secured floated. Including the drinks cart, the two cabin crew, several passengers, and me. When the plane was under control again, the captain opened the drinks cart up, no limit, no cost.

The second was an American Airlines Jetstream 32, DFW-->Be aumont. The pilot tried to out run a huge storm. And failed. At one point we were maybe 1,500' AGL, with about 750'/minute of down. I thought I was about to be in a plane crash. We leveled out at about 500' AGL.

This is why I no longer fly American or through DFW.

While a military advisor in far western Iran, flying into the local airport in an army L20.

Full cloud cover about 2K feet above ground. Mountains completely surround the town and airport.

Pilot spoke to someone on the radio, then kind of circled around a bit. Then suddenly does a very steep turn and dives into the clouds. We broke thru the clouds about 500 feet above ground, made a sharp bank, flared out and touched down.

Later when I was on radio duty, we did the same maneuver, except I was the one on the ground telling the pilot he was directly overhead.

My 21st birthday....

Flying from Port a Prince to Cap Haitian (sp) on a C130. I swear the pilot though he was flying an A10 on a CAS mission. Almost sprayed the equipment we were bringing.

What made it worst was when we exited the aircraft it was 100+ degrees ....and the smell of shit combined with avgas hit me...

The major I was with thought it was quite amusing " dewhorse you turned 3 shades of green"

Another was not bad .....but I thought it was until I understood the local customs.

First flight in an AN124, on take off it was snowing so bad we damned near had to follow the plow during take off...

Once we landed the entire flight broke into jubilant applause.....I wondered what calamity I missed.

It was explained later that they always do that due to the propensity of the AN124 falling out of the sky.

I clapped with the rest on my next flight.

Traveling with our 3 kids, aged 7, 5, and 2. Everytime is the worst.

There was also that time I kept being asked if I was carrying a gun by the flight crew, until the plainclothes DSS agent sitting next to me told them they were talking to the wrong person and told them that's an easy way to get someone hurt. Once that ice-breaker was over with we had a great conversation on our all-too-short flight.

We flew from St. Louis to visit my sister in Orlando. Our daughter was 2, she did not have her own seat as she was a "lap" passenger, and she was a good flier for her first flight.

Just when they started the approach our daughter threw up on both my wife and I. The flight attendents could not help because we were landing so we remained covered in vomit until we hit the gate.

She settled down until we pulled up to my sisters drive way in the rental car, and guess what, she threw up again in the back seat.

Turned out she was sick and the pressure from the flight put her over the top.

About 5 years ago. Flying commercial out of Denver to make a Thanksgiving visit. I'd estimate about 3 seconds away from enough speed to lift the front gear and the front landing gear tire blew. That was some interesting braking!

Nothing exceptionally harrowing for me but:

1. C-130 Cargo Flight in the 1960's from Alaska to Dover AFB. Very Loud and long. Only seating was the net type seats along the fuselage
2. Flying as a spotter on a search and rescue mission in a Grumman Goose in very turbulent conditions in a remote coastal area of Alaska, the only time I ever lost it. The aircraft and politicians were never found.
3. Riding in a Korean War Vintage OH-23 surplus Helicopter while doing a drug surveillance. We were at about 8000 feet in a very windy mountainous area. The helicopter hit some sort of air pocket and dropped 50 feet and stopped with an obvious "thud". Scared the crap out of both the pilot and me. We headed for base without any second thoughts.
4. Seat 52 J (next to toilets) Smoking section on a 747 from Detroit to Narita.